Three Iraqis were wounded Thursday in US and British air attacks on civilian targets in southern Iraq, a military spokesman said in the Iraqi capital.

"Three Iraqi citizens were injured in the enemy aerial bombardments of civilian installations in the province of Basra," the spokesman was quoted by the official INA news agency as saying.

He said "missile and anti-aircraft batteries fired on enemy planes, forcing them to flee to their evil bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait."

US and British planes based in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey patrol two no-fly zones imposed in the north and south of Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.

Since the 1991 Gulf War, US and British warplanes based in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been enforcing a ban on Iraqi flights in the south to protect Shiite Muslims and in the north to protect the Kurds.

Iraq does not recognize the zones, which are not authorized by any specific UN resolution, and has regularly fired on aircraft patrolling them since joint US-British air raids on Baghdad in December 1998.

Since the end of the "Operation Desert Fox" in December 1998, Baghdad claims that the raids have killed 316 and wounded 949 people -- BAGHDAD (AFP)